What are the 1,2,3,4,5 positions in basketball, and what do they mean when they say that a player was +20 in a game?

There are two forwards, two guards and a center. The guards play near the basket side of the court, and the forwards play out near the center line. The fifth player is the center (self-explanatory). This link gives a good rundown of the game, its history, and the basic rules.

1.Point Guard
2. Shooting Guard
3. Small Forward
4. Power Forward
5. Center

I’m thinking the +20 refers to oner 20 points scored.

^ Yeah . I play basketball, and fantasy basketball. ”+20” usually indicates a player exceeding 20 points.

There are lots of slang terms used in basketball. A “dime” for instance is an assist.

@Strauss @MrGrimm888 I think that there’s more to it than that, because a player can sometimes be negative, as in “he was minus 1.97”. I think that a player’s mistakes (as in turnovers) are also taken into account. Just wanted to know what the formula is.

I’ll add though that many teams don’t have a classic 1–2-3–4-5 position. There are always guards, but having 3 guards and 2 forwards is a common scenario.

+20 means that throughout the duration of a game, when a player was on the court, his/her team outscored the opponent by 20 points.

This statistic is usually referred to as plus/minus.

Suppose a team wins a game by 4 points.
Player A scored 32 points and finished with a plus/minus of -7.
Player B scored 5 points and finished with a plus/minus of +16.

Even though player B didn’t score many points, she may have made contributions in ways that are not represented by conventional statistics. Like playing shut-down defense, for example.

@Lawn Thank you. Your explanation makes a lot of sense.